Apr 3, 2012

Deadly Blaze hits Moscow Market Warehouse

Fifteen people have been killed by a fire that swept through a market warehouse in southern Moscow.

The victims were migrant workers from former Soviet states, according to the city fire department.

The two-storey building was being used as living quarters for the market vendors.



The fire at Kachalovsky market came hours after a blaze at a skyscraper in Moscow, in which no-one was hurt.

The market fire broke out at about 04:50 (00:50 GMT) and was extinguished some three hours later, RIA Novosti news agency said, citing officials.

Most of the dead were from the Central Asian state of Tajikistan and the rest may have come from other countries in the region, state media said.

They were staying in a metal storage warehouse at a construction materials market which "was not meant for people to live in," Sergei Gorbunov of the fire department told RIA.

Emergency workers described cramped living conditions where people slept on hard cots stacked on top of each other, according to the Interfax news agency.

The living quarters had no direct access to the street, and emergency workers had to cut their way into the building.

One investigator suggested the fire could have been caused by an electric heater left on overnight, Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The large numbers of migrant workers are employed in Moscow, often without being issued official work permits.

Paid little, many have no choice but to live in uncomfortable, and often squalid conditions.

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